Supreme Court strikes down advance-permission requirements for gun ownership
The Supreme Court, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, struck down a Hawaii law that required residents to obtain government permission in advance before they could possess a firearm. The majority held that conditioning gun ownership on a discretionary permit-to-acquire violates the Second Amendment.
The ruling extends the logic of the court’s earlier decisions, which had focused largely on the right to carry firearms in public, to the threshold act of acquiring and keeping a gun. States that maintain similar “permit-to-purchase” or licensing regimes for ownership — concentrated in the Northeast and on the West Coast — will likely have to revise them, while background-check requirements at the point of sale are unaffected by the holding.
The three dissenting justices argued that the decision removes a tool states have used to screen buyers before a transaction, leaving fewer options to keep firearms from people who would fail a check.